Keith Saunders

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Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

It’s the end of the year and I’ve got nothing. I’m running on E, emotionally, artistically, and spiritually. We’ve got a lying sack of excrement in the White House that 40 per cent of the country approve of. The Dems are taking control of the Congress which opens the door for impeachment, but with the feckless Republican-controlled Senate there is little or no chance of conviction.

Sports continue to be a microcosm of capitalism with the rich getting richer (Yankees/Dodgers/Warriors) and an almost cult-like subservience to time-sucking instant replay booth reviews.

As much as I practice and strive to improve it is looking like too little too late. The time is growing short and I’ve got a lot left to accomplish, not the least of which is staying alive. How much longer will gigs and teaching be a reliable source of income? Was it ever?

Conventional thinking would be that this is a horrible time to be a Republican. President Donald Trump is a disgrace to the office – a detestable, incurious, narcissist who likely is suffering from some form of dementia. The Republican majority Congress has been ineffectual and, with few exceptions, unwilling to challenge the corrupt and incompetent executive office.

I will submit to you, however, that there has never been a better time to be a Republican. Thanks to decades of allowing our public education to go to seed the populace lacks the intelligence to understand relevant issues, and therefore are willing to vote against their interest. Racism is rampant and has not been this blatant since the 1950s – it’s not a stretch to envision a return to the days of Jim Crow.

This is a perfect storm. We have a population that is too stupid and racist to understand that what is holding them back is the divide between rich and poor, and we have a ruling party willing to exploit their ignorance. This is the outcome of years of capitalism run amok.

When I was a kid and encountered an alpha-dog, as an introvert I suffered largely in silence. I took comfort in the rationalization was that after high school these dullards would end up in dead-end jobs and would almost certainly become alcoholics, wife-beaters, or felons.

And there you have the most irritating part of the Trump phenomenon. This brainless oaf who never got his come-comeuppance, and was in fact rewarded for his loutish ways. Personally I yearn to see Trump having to resign in disgrace, even though I realize this means that Mike Pence, someone whose politics are just as bad, if not worse than Trump’s, will ascend to the presidency.

The 2016 election actually confirmed one of the tenets of the American dream – anyone can become president. Allow me to rephrase that: Anyone with money can become president.

As we now know, there are no necessary qualifications for the job of United States president. You don’t have to have been a politician, a lawyer, a military officer. There is no need to possess a thorough knowledge of history, science, civics, or economics. I could be president, even though my greatest life-skill is knowing what to play over a C7+9+5 chord.

Donald Trump won the popular vote by nearly 3,000,000 votes. A lot of people have been saying, writing, and tweeting that he has no mandate, but I don’t believe his lack of popular support will effect him one bit.

Trump’s mandate is the fact that he doesn’t care whether or not he has a mandate. Why should he stop doing what has worked for him? Think of it – he’s bullet-proof. He can ridicule handicapped people, have an ex-porn star wife, show admiration for a Russian dictator, admit to grabbing women’s pussies, and refuse to release his tax records. Nothing can harm this guy!

The worst thing about Trump being president is having to endure countless thinkpieces, as well as mansplaining-lectures from dullards as to how the salt of the earth rust belters cast a protest vote against the Dem machine. Two years from now while these idiotic,racist idiots scratch their heads while standing on unemployment lines I’ll be sitting in my ivory tower laughing and pointing. I can do $50.00 gigs until I die, what do I care?

But don’t tell me that Trump was employing some kind of Machiavellian strategy, pulling the wool over the American people. Please. Americans are stupid and racist enough. They saw a celebrity with racist overtones and these cretins who couldn’t accept being governed by a woman voted for the blowhard.

And fuck Hillary too. That’s the best the Dems could come up with? She’s a modern-day Ralph Kramden, not even bothering to campaign in Wisconsin. That’s how cocky she was.

Hillary: I had it and I went with it. Easy come, easy go!

So keep on writing and explaining to me, media. I’ll read every wor….[brrrrring!]

I was wrong. For nine months I insisted that there is no way that the American people would elect Donald Trump. Although we have a conservative, celebrity-driven culture, I insisted, we are not reactionary enough to elect an unintelligent, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, failed realtor.

How wrong I was. Today, along with the rest of liberal Americans, I eat crow. I over-estimated the intelligence of the American people.

And to the blue-collar, salt of the earth, working class Americans in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin I sent out a hearty and heartfelt, fuck you. Get the fuck out of here with your high-minded morality and your hypocritical church going ways. Because guess what? He’s taking you down right alongside lefty, commie, kale-loving yours truly.

The fact is that you real Americans are going to need affordable health care, roads, schools, and who knows, maybe even an abortion or two. Good luck with all of that. Do you really believe that a crooked billionaire real estate mogul gives even the tiniest fuck about the state of blue-collar America? If you do I was wondering if you would invest in my next recording project: Keitho plays the music of Bud Powell. That record has a better chance of going platinum than blue collar workers do of finding jobs under a Trump presidency.

Listening to NPR radio last night I nearly threw up in my mouth. The general consensus was that a populist movement propelled Trump to the Whitehouse. I call bullshit. It was pure, unadulterated racism. We have seen the kind of people that a Trump rally attract. They are scum of the earth, thuggish, racist, white trash. You can take that kind of populism and shove it up your ass.

Eight years ago I voted and for the first time in my life was proud to be an American. Now I am ashamed to be one. These are dark days.

The election season will come to its merciful conclusion tomorrow with the assurance that the outcome will be utterly depressing. The most likely result, that Hillary Clinton becomes the first woman president, provides us with four more years of the status quo – rising income inequality, the continued use of drone warfare, and a government beholden to Wall Street and corporate interests.

Of course a Trump presidency throws us back into the stone age. I don’t believe that The Donald would be more than a figurehead, but when you consider the damage that a Mike Pence and a stasi-esque Cabinet could wreak the mind boggles.

I do not believe that Trump will win, but regardless, the damage has been done. He has exposed the racist underbelly of the United States and it is exponentially greater than was thought. The fact that nearly half of the electorate will cast their vote for a racist, homophobic, xenophobic, narcissistic dullard speaks volumes on the state of the American psyche.

Then you have the effete liberals, practically pissing their pants in fear of a Trump victory. I haven’t seen such pearl clutching since Zabars stopped carrying organic Camembert cheese. Man up! We lived through twelve years of the Bush dynasty and eight years of Reagan — we’ll make it through Trump.

Or not. Who cares at this point? In a country that doesn’t provide health care, wages perpetual war, rewards corrupt, predatory CEOs, punishes its working class, sentences its college goers to a life of crippling debt, and leaves its poor to scramble for minimum wage jobs, what’s the difference?

It looks like Trump is finally meeting his waterloo. Not that he had much chance of being elected even before the Trump tapes leaked yesterday. Now, however, instead of merely losing in a landslide, we have speculation of him bowing out of the race, and it’s a foregone conclusion that his campaign will go down as the most disgraceful in history. (for now)

One wonders why these tapes couldn’t have been leaked before the primaries. It’s hard not to be cynical. The media, liberal and conservative alike, have been feeding us 24 hour a day Trump coverage — it has been in their interest to keep him in the race as long as possible. Did the leaker sit on these tapes knowing he or she would get a better payday in October than in December? For that matter, how much did he make on these tapes?

We didn’t learn anything new from the tapes. Did anyone actually believe that Trump was a gentleman? He has spent the better part of his campaign spewing racism, sexism and xenophobia. It’s not that far of a stretch to imagine him as a sexual predater. When you look at the feigned shock of Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, it’s hard to feel anything other than revulsion. He has no right to distance himself from Trump. Especially considering he has all he morality of a hyenna.

The big loser is Ted Cruz. After endorsing Trump last month, Cruz lost every shread of credibilty he had gained from his speech at the Republican convention in which he pointedly failed to endorse Trump, advising the delegates to “…vote your consience.” I’m picturing Cruz alone in his house with a 5th of scotch smacking his forehead Chris Farley style while crying, “I’m so stupid!”

Has there ever been a person that looked forward to a debate more than Hillary Clinton is looking forward to tomorrow’s rematch with Trump? It’s going to take all of her restraint to refrain from opening with her pattented shimmy while exclaiming, “Okay!”

Naked Trump statues are happening, and apparently in more than one city. There’s one in the Castro district of San Francisco, as well as four other cities. That’s what you get when you brag about the size of your penis in the age of the smarmy internet.

That said, I am more amused than offended by the statue. In fact I’m not offended at all. What has offended me is an incurious, docile media that has treated this man as if he was a serious, qualified candidate. Too many articles take Trump’s proposed policies seriously rather than question the hubris and sanity of the man.

You’ve got a media that is in the pockets of corporate America, and in Trump, a ratings bonanza. This is not a good recipe. It is not in the media’s interest to question the man or to report on an America that is decidedly more racist than was previously imagined.

If all that is left for us plebes is to engage in locker room humor then I say bring it on!